But there have been other causes too: the domestic association of whale meat with low-grade school lunch food, price levels associated with gourmet food and the uneconomical nature of long whaling voyages to Antarctica.
So the seeds of my Jewish identity were planted among corn and cows, alongside Christians, against intermittent, low-grade, school-yard anti-Semitism, in a town where clueless teachers routinely asked me to stand before the class and explain "Hanukkah, the Jewish Christmas".
If not, then those who can will have to buy these most precious commodities by contributing privately with top-ups to a basic NHS and private tuition to get children through exams that low-grade schools no longer achieve.
Mr. Levy said at a board meeting yesterday that 320,000 warning letters had been mailed to parents of children in the 3rd through 12th grade who may have to attend summer school because of poor attendance, or low grades on school work and standardized tests.
Her mother described Sakia as a "friendly and loving" child who loved basketball and played guard on the West Side High team until low grades led school officials to remove her temporarily from the team.
Instead, it keyed on Anthony's low grades and school behavior record.
During middle school, a low grade means a visit by the parent to the teacher, not to demand red ink over purple but to complain that Johnny deserves a higher grade because the teacher made the test too hard.
A spokesman for Mr. Madigan described the event as "a low-grade high school prank" and said Mr. Madigan did not know the candidate in question.
For the realists, there is probably no purer film than Mr. Philibert's, a resolutely low-key study of a gifted grade school teacher working with children in the mountainous region of the Auvergne.
The emails showed that Bennett had adjusted the latter state's school grading formula after an influential charter school, Christel House Academy, initially received a low grade.
Third, they suffer a significant employment penalty for low grades "in all schools outside the top ten".
